Data fusion of remote-sensing and in-lake chlorophylla data using statistical downscaling

Chlorophylla is a green pigment, used as an indirect measure of lake water quality. Its strong absorption of blue and red light allows for quantification through satellite images, providing better spatial coverage than traditional in-lake samples. However, grid-cell scale imagery must be calibrated spatially using in-lake point samples, presenting a change-of-support problem. This paper presents a method of statistical downscaling, namely a Bayesian spatially-varying coefficient regression, which assimilates remotely-sensed and in-lake data, resulting in a fully calibrated spatial map of chlorophylla with associated uncertainty measures. The model is applied to a case study dataset from Lake Balaton, Hungary. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of Spatial Statistics 2015: Emerging Patterns committee.